An Email To My Brother About Time

I've got some good news for you: A theory I like about time is that it's on a loop.
     Einstein put it this way (and I'm paraphrasing here): "God created time so that everything wouldn't happen at once." God Himself said (also paraphrasing), "I am the Alpha and the Omega. The Beginning and the End."
     Do you know what that means?
     It means that when the time loop ends, it begins all over again, so you'll have your chance at all those high school girlfriends the football team stole from you in high school. They played football, you picked onions on your summer vacation. Where was the contest in that?
     You were a child of the sixties, and while all the hippies were into all that "free love" and "love the one your with" stuff, you were busy being married to your first wife. That's the sad part about the time loop... you end up with your first wife all over again, over and over, again and again, for all eternity.
     Still, the plus side is that you get to see your kids as babies again. Feed them, hold them, change their diapers. Unless you were like Dad, and refused to change diapers. Myself, I enjoyed every minute of every diaper I changed. My daughter needed me back then. Now she goes to her room for privacy and comes out when she wants her feet rubbed. Sometimes she's Daddy's little girl, other times she's arguing with me about why can't be dropped off at the mall all by herself.

     I need to come up with a theory about that some day.

     Getting back to my original point, when you think about it, maybe our memories are nothing but us accessing those alternate time streams. We're not actually remembering them, what we're doing is watching live-streaming of our lives as it's happening on a different time frequency.

     Speaking of time, how come, when we get older, time starts to move so fast? The older we get, the faster time flies. Except for our bodies. In our physical bodies, time slows down. You only have to see an old man walk or move to see that he's on slow motion. The same with his thoughts. An old man's thoughts can't keep up with the information that's being fed to him. But time around us speeds up. Kind of like when you see a movie or TV show or commercial where the main person is moving normally or slowly, but the world around him is moving fast.
     Kind of like that.

     Gravity also seems to weigh more heavily on us as time goes by. When you're a kid with little time baggage to carry, gravity barely has a hold on you as you run and jump and climb trees and walk the rock fence to go steal watermelons from your neighbor's garden. But when you're old and carrying a lot of time baggage, gravity just drags you down, and makes it hard to move from point A to point B.
     When you're a kid, you can fall and not get hurt, because gravity isn't pulling you down as hard, so you just jump up and keep on doing what you're doing. But when you're old and you fall... SOMETHING is gonna break. You walk like you're an astronaut on the moon. And you land like a hundred-pound bag of glass.

     Since we're on the subject of time and our old high school girlfriends, let me give you a hypothetical question: Say at the age you are now, you were able to go back in time and have sex with one of your old girlfriends that you used to have sex with... would THAT be statutory rape? I mean, it's still you. It's just you in the future. And you've ALREADY had sex with her, so it's not like you're being all pervy and stuff.
     To take this thought even further, let's say you go back in time, and your high school self is having sex with your girlfriend. If you join in, does that make it a threesome?

     What are the implications here?
 
 

Raising My Father

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You Win. For Now. (Part Three)

My Dad's quite a character. And so is Sophia, Maloney's mother-in-law .
     Maloney works during the week, but on weekends he'll get up and cook everyone breakfast. One particular morning, he made everyone chicken and egg burritos. When everybody was well-fed and off to their own rooms, his mother-in-law offered to do the dishes.
     "That's nice of her," Maloney thought to himself. And then he went off to go pick his nose or something.
     Sophia's helpful that way. She's always offering to throw out the trash or pick up the dog poops from the backyard. The only problem with her doing the dishes, however, is that her eyesight is bad, so she can't see what a lousy job she's done. Then Gail, Maloney's wife, waits for her mom to go to her 2nd favorite room in the house, and she'll wash the dishes all over again.
     "That's wasting water, mom," their youngest daughter chastises them.
     "Fine," Gail will tell her. "If you want to eat off these dishes, be my guest."
     "No way, mom!" she'll say, and then run off before her mom can make her wash the dishes.
     When he got back, the dishes were done, and all loaded in the dishwasher just like Gail told her to do. (Sophia and Gail are old-school. They like to wash the dishes the old-fashioned way... by hand.) Maloney looked for the frying pan, and found it next to the stove... sitting on the shiny granite counter!
     In case you're wondering what the big deal is, a frying pan is heavy and has a coarse bottom. If you place it on a granite counter there's the possibility that you'll scratch that granite counter. In fact, I would say that there's more than a possibility. There's a definite probability that the counter will be scratched. Eventually.
     If I haven't made my point yet, the frying pan was ON the granite counter. While, just inches away, was the STOVE. It would have take NO effort to have just placed the heavy, coarse frying pan on the stove, where it belongs. But for some reason Sophia chose NOT to.
     The mistake Maloney made was telling her about it. Usually, he'll just tell his wife, and Gail will pass on the bad news.
     "Sophia," Maloney told his mother-in-law. "When you wash the dishes, don't put the frying pan on the granite counter. You'll scratch it."
     "What?"
     "When you wash the dishes, DON'T put the frying pan on the granite counter. You'll scratch it."
     "What?"
     Sophia's hearing is as selective as my Dad's, so Maloney had to speak louder.
     "Don't Put The Frying Pan On The Counter!" Maloney yelled.
     And THAT'S when his wife happened to walk into the kitchen. His mother-in-law got all weepy-eyed, and said, "But I dried it."
     Gail was giving Maloney the stink eye by then, but Maloney was already committed to making his point.
     "It doesn't matter that it's dry," he tried to explain. "Water doesn't scratch the granite. The frying pan scratches the granite. Just put the pan on the stove where it belongs."
     Sophia turned to her daughter.
     "But I dried it," she told her.
     "Yes, mom," Gail comforted her, and led her back to her room, occasionally looking back at Maloney to give him dirty looks.
 
     "I don't even know what you're complaining about, Maloney," I told him. We've kind of developed an Elderly Parent War Story competition.. "Early this morning I told my Dad that we were going out for lunch at 12:00. He must have asked us four times when we were going out for lunch. Twelve I told him over and over again. Twelve o-clock. 9:30 comes around and he's already dressed and sitting in his--my--favorite chair watching the minutes tick by. So we had to watch him, for two and a half hours, just sit there. Waiting. The television wasn't even on."

     Is this what we'll eventually become? Old men with nothing better to do than watch the hands move on a clock? I mean, in addition to leaving the stove on and forgetting to close or lock the doors?
     "Is that the best you got?" Maloney snorted. "I found out the hard way that Sophia doesn't close the door when she goes to the bathroom late at night."
 
     Okay, Maloney, you win.
     For now.
 
 

Raising My Father

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Don't Waste My Time (Part Two)

"I think you're just looking for things to complain about," I told Maloney.
     "No, I'm not," he said.
     "Yes, you are."
     "No, I'm not."
     I let it end there because he was starting to sound like one-half of an Abbott & Costello routine.
     I understand Maloney's point. When you're doing something unpleasant, the last thing you want is someone standing over your shoulder asking dumb questions (In school they taught me that there's no such thing as a dumb question, but life has taught me otherwise.), so, when Maloney had the unhappy task of wiping up what was obviously dog urine, he didn't need his mother-in-law asking him for a chemical analysis.
     You know how to break someone of the habit of looking over your shoulder and asking dumb questions? You give them something to do. It's amazing how fast people learn magic and disappear when you ask them to help you do something.
     "Remember when I told you how she eats one of my pigs," he continued, talking about a gingerbread-shaped pig that they sell at the bakery. His wife buys him two, one for immediate consumption and one for work a day or two later.
     "Yeah. So what?"
     "Well, now she's eating BOTH of them. She eats hers, and then she eats the one I'm saving for work."
     "At the same time?"
     "No, she'll eat it a day or two later."
     I think about that.
     "Maybe when she doesn't see you eat it right away, she thinks you don't want it."
     "But I DO want it. I'm just saving it for work."
     There was no arguing with Maloney, but he wasn't done yet.
     "And she tells me EVERYTHING. When she gets up, she'll tell me that she's getting up. When she sits down, she'll tell me she's sitting down. When she takes the dogs out, she can SEE me SEE her taking them out, and she STILL tells me she's taking them out. What am I going to do, tell her she can't take out the dogs? That I WANT them to pee in the house?"
     You know, Maloney's a good guy but you would think he'd have better examples than the ones he tells me about if he wants to waste his time complaining.
 
 

Raising My Father

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What? No Cookies? (Part One)

I've just gotten back from Costco. 
     Well, my wife and I have. If it was me, I could have gotten away with keeping it under a hundred bucks. My wife treats shopping at Costco and Sam's as if it were an Olympic event. With her, it's a competition to see how fast she can go through my retirement, and, in the end, all the items we ended up buying fit into just three boxes.
     For some reason, I seem to be the only one in the house who doesn't like to waste money. I didn't grow up poor and deprived, so I'm not carrying around that baggage. My Mom always had a kitchen full of food, with my Dad, just like me, probably complaining about how much everything cost. I say "probably," because my parents never argued or had any serious discussions in front of us kids. But back to me being cheap...
     I mean, frugal.
     My wife has started to buy these paper hand towels for the bathroom counters. That way, when we wash our hands or brush our teeth, we can wipe off the counter when we're done. One day, I made the mistake of looking at how much they cost.
     Yikes!
     It's not that they were going to put me in the poor house, but they were more expensive than I was willing to spend, mainly because of how quickly we go through them.
     "Why can't we just use paper towels?" I asked my wife.
     "Because they're ugly," she told me.
     Quite frankly, I think the box that these paper hand towels come in are pretty ugly, too. It's not like they match anything. But, still, I couldn't argue with her opinion of what qualifies as ugly. If I argue too persuasively, I might end up not making the right side of the cut.
     "We can keep the roll under the sink," I suggested.
     "Ah... no," she suggested back.
     So, what I decided to do was, instead of use the paper hand towels, I just tear off a couple of squares of toilet paper, and dry off the counter with that. 1) It's cheaper, 2) It works just as well, and 3) Well, there is no three, but I felt kind of skimpy just offering you two reasons.
     It had never occurred to me to use toilet paper that way, but it seemed like a pretty logical solution once I did my secret shopping. Anyway...
     As I carry in the boxes inside the house, I hear my Dad letting out a laugh. He's strutting up and down the kitchen counter pathway, checking out what we bought. He looks in one box, and then the other. I hear him telling my wife that she buys too much groceries.
     "Hee, hee, hee! God al'mighty," he says, as if it's any of his business.
     He looks at me and laughs in a what-a-dope kind of way.
     "You guys buy too much. Too much," he says, shaking his head. His thinning, white hair flopping forward into his forehead. His arms going all over the place like a muppet from Sesame Street.
     I look at my wife. She can see it in my eyes that I'm about to tell him, "Well, if you didn't eat three full meals a day, with snacks in between, I could cut my food bill in half."
     My wife looks at me. I can see it in her eyes that she's telling me, "If you know what's good for you, you better not say a thing."
     My wife. She loves that old man.
     As we are putting away the groceries, my Dad keeps walking back and forth, looking at us, looking at what we bought.
     "Hee, hee, hee," he says, still strutting "Hee, hee, hee. You guys always buy too much."
     And then he stops. His cranes his neck. His eyes start to bulge because he's looking for something he doesn't see. So his head starts swinging around like it's on an old, wrinkly swivel.
     "Hey, you didn't buy any..." Click, click, click! Smack, smack, smack! Mumble, mumble, mumble! "...cookies?"

  

     "You think you've got problems?" Maloney tells me, even though he frames it as a question. "My dog had an accident by the front door (that's where my mother-in-law's bedroom is), and I had to give him a whack. My mother-in-law gets up from her bed, where she's laying down watching TV like a queen. She's just nosy, that way. I take the dog to the backyard, and when I come back she's peeking around the door. I grab some paper towels, some wipes, and the mop. I start to clean it all up. She's just looking at me.
     " 'Do you need any help?' she asks me, which was nice of her to do. I tell her no thanks. I mean, wiping up dog pee is a one-person job.
     "So she's looking at me on my knees cleaning up a giant pool of urine, and...

     " 'What did the dog do?' Mrs. Obvious asked me."
     And Maloney stands there, expecting some kind of a reaction from me.
     "That's it?" I ask him.
     "Well... yeah," Maloney says, waving his arms around. Kind of like my Dad.
     "That's not so bad," I tell him, but I'm thinking, You think YOU'VE got problems.
 
 

Raising My Father

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Some Things Just Bug Me

Some things just bug me.
     Every sunrise, my Dad and I drink our morning coffees as we listen to the news on TV. I like to brew some gourmet coffee that I blend myself. As far as addictions go, that's not such a bad one. Just ask Philip Seymour Hoffman.
     My Dad, on the other hand, likes instant coffee. I don't know why. Not even the top of the line brand, just whatever's cheapest at Wal-Mart.
     "Dad," I'll ask, "why don't you try the coffee I buy."
     "No, thanks," he'll say.
     "It's good," I'll tell him.
     "No, thanks," he'll tell me.
     "Let me make you a cup," I'll persist.
     "No, thanks," he'll persist, too.
     "How about..."
     "How can I tell you no in a way you'll accept?" he'll cut in, ending my persistence.
     My Dad. He can be quite eloquent when he wants. Even at 94.
     What we also like to do while we're having our coffee is read the newspaper. Well, make that: while my Dad reads the newspaper. If I'm lucky, maybe I can I'll grab a few sections while my Dad stakes his claim on the front page. I'll read the Sports section, the comics, Dear Abby. I'll go through the Classified section, read the editorials, the letters to the editor. I'll even look at the advertisements. And then I'll place all the sections I've read close to my father so he can also read them.
     Now, what my father does, he has this habit of reading the front page and then setting that section next to him when he's done, just out of my reach. I only have time to read the paper in the morning, so if I don't read it then, then I don't read it at all. My days are just too busy, and I end up missing my daily dose of bad news.
     Today, it's Super Bowl Sunday, and the front page is sitting on the table right next to him as he eats his breakfast. He's not reading it, in fact he's done with it, but he's keeping it close to him like a new girlfriend. It sits just close enough to him that if I reach over to snatch it from him, I'll invade his space.

      I guess I'd better go do something else.
     Like shoot myself in the head.

     I've been invited to several Super Bowl parties, but I like watching the game alone. But, alas, not today. Today I have to watch it with my Dad. The good news is, I'm going to watch it on the super-duper large-screen TV in the great room, but the bad news is, if my Dad starts his smacking and snacking and groaning and moaning and clicking his tongue and letting loose some gas (Let's me just politely say that yesterday my Dad cleared out the kitchen. Our dogs even left, it stunk so bad.), if he starts all that, then I'll just go watch it on the 18-incher I have in my office.
     My wife is making her world-famous chili.
     Maybe later I'll give my Dad a taste of his own medicine.
     If you get my drift.
 
 

Raising My Father

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Maloney's Dilemma (Part One)

My Buddy, Maloney, has a dilemma.
     All he wanted was to go on a nice vacation with his wife.
     Of course, they'd have to take their youngest. She was twelve and couldn't be left behind. In fact, being twelve, she wanted to invite her best friend, who was also twelve.
     That was no problem.
     A vacation for four. Two adults and two kids. That would make for a nice time. But... of course... there was a complication.
     His middle daughter, who was 20 and had already declared her independence by moving out (only to move back in a few months later when she discovered how expensive independence was), when she found out they were going to Disneyland, was quick to reintroduce herself into the family. That was no problem, either. She was a good kid, with a good heart, and was fun to be with.
     Boswell, his 24-year-old step-son, was also quick to assume he was invited. It didn't occur to him that he was a grown-ass man who could afford to go on vacation--since he was still being supported by his mother--anywhere in the world he was inclined to go any time he wanted. Why he was inclined to leech onto a Disneyland vacation with two twelve-year-old girls, Maloney couldn't understand.
     At the age of 24, Maloney was busy moving back to the United States after finishing college in Germany. Maloney's father was a General in the Army, and was in charge of a military base there. When his father was re-assigned (if that's what you call it) back to the U.S., Maloney decided to stay in Germany and finish his education, and maybe even take a few college courses besides.
     I could sympathize. I moved out of my parents house at 18. When I graduated from high school, I decided to put what I learned in my geography class to use and put as much of it between me and a house I couldn't bring home a date to so I could put to use what I learned in my health class. So, at Maloney's step-son's age, I would have LOVED a house free of parents and younger sisters. Maloney felt the same way. Maloney's step-son...
     ...well, the great love of his life seems to be his iPhone. At an age where Maloney and I were changing our addresses and phone numbers to avoid unwanted pregnancies, Boswell's phone was keeping him warm late at night.
     And there were still more complications.
     Maloney's mother-in-law.
     At 70 years of age, SHE had to be taken along, too.
     She had only taken care of herself for the last 70 years, but her daughter--Maloney's wife, Gail--saw her mother like she saw her two oldest children... like babies.
     Sophia, her mother, had already made the mistake of leaving the burner of the stove on once, but that was enough for Gail not to trust her at home by herself for any length of time. Gail didn't want to go on vacation, only to come back to a house burnt to the ground like a crispy critter.
     Besides, Sophia liked to go on walks several times a day, and left the front door unlocked so she could let herself back in, because Gail didn't trust her with a key to the house, either. Part of this was because when Gail was a single mother and Boswell was about 5-years-old, they were living with her mom, and Gail had bought her son one of those toy electric cars, that young kids can drive around in, for his birthday. Not too long after, she came home from work one day and her son's toy car was missing.
     Her mother had given her grandson's toy car to her low-life boyfriend, Henry, so he could give it to HIS grandson.
     "Can you believe that?" Maloney asked me when he told me the story.
     I grunted some kind of a reply, because Maloney's stories kind of go on past the point where they're no longer interesting before he gets to his point, so my mind had already wandered off and was doing something interesting, like math.
     Which is a long way to say that Maloney's mother-in-law was going with them on vacation, whether she wanted to or not and whether he wanted her to or not.
     "To tell the truth," Maloney told me, telling me the truth, "she probably doesn't even want to go."
     His theory was that she'd  prefer staying home so she could finally let her low-life boyfriend in through the front door for the change, instead of sneaking him in through the window.
     Allegedly.
     So what should have been a pleasant vacation for four, quickly became a vacation for four plus three grown-ass adults. Three hungry, expensive, grown-ass adults.
     All of a sudden, my life raising my 94-year-old father doesn't seem so bad.
 
 

Raising My Father

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Random Acts of Kindness

 

as submitted to the AARP Bulletin

 

I saw them out of the corner of my eye, so I made a u-turn,  doubled back, and parked.

     It was two kids, a boy and a girl. They couldn't have been more than 7 or 8, and they were selling cup cakes for 50 cents a pop. So I bought 4 that my bathroom scale said I didn’t need, and paid with 2 dollar bills I took out of my wallet. I also gave them all the change in my pocket as a tip. It was substantial. It came close to five bucks. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my father, it’s to always buy something from a kid in a make-shift stand.

     You see, my father could never drive past any kid selling drinks or snacks, without stopping to joke with them buy more than he needed, and leave them with a generous tip besides.

     As a kid, I only cared about the drink or pastry that was heading my way. As a teenager, I didn’t care at all.

     “Aw, dad,” I’d gripe.  I don't know why I was in such a hurry to get nowhere, but I was. Another thing I was, was obnoxious. “Do we have to stop for every kid who’s selling something?”

     “Why not?” my dad once answered me, simply. And then he casually threw out, "Hey, remember the time you had a lemonade stand?”

     “Whatever,” I exhaled, fully expecting it to turn into another life lesson or character-building experience for me.

     I couldn’t have been more than 10, when late one hot summer afternoon I got the notion to sell lemonade. It was hot, people were thirsty, and besides isn’t that what kids do?

     I spent the next hour preparing. I borrowed my parent’s poker table and a fold-out chair. I got the cigar box I kept my baseball cards in and emptied it out, I needed the room for all the money I was going to make. And I used up all of my mom’s lemons and most of her sugar making my tart concoction. Now…

     All I needed were customers.

     I sat outside in the hot sun and waited. Time passed and I waited some more.

     No one came. No one stopped.

     The ice in my mother’s pitcher slowly melted. I waited some more. Eventually, the ice melted completely. Now all I was left with was the heat, some warm, watered down lemonade, and no customers. Around that time, my dad got home from work. He was a police officer, and he was still wearing his uniform.

     “What are you selling, son?” he asked, cheerfully.

     “Lemonade,” I answered, probably not sounding as cheerful.

     He peeked inside my cigar box. It looked sad and lonely.

     “No customers?” he asked, trying to stay positive.

     “No, dad.”

     I got up, ready to call it a day. If it was anything, it was a life lesson and character-building experience for me. My first.

     Did I say I had no customers? Well, that’s not completely true. I did have one very generous customer at the end of my day.

     My dad.

    

Raising My Father

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jimduchene.blogspot.com  Fifty Shades of Funny

@JimDuchene